who is Geoffroy Lejeune, the new editorial director whom his journalists see as an “intruder” in the line of “values” of the newspaper?

There are several hundred personalities to express their concern in the newspaper The world dated Tuesday, June 27, among which, Sophie Binet, Lionel Jospin, Yannick Noah or even Joseph Stiglietz. And here is what the signatories write about Geoffroy Lejeune: “for the first time since the Liberation, a major national media will be headed by a far-right personality”, saying they were flabbergasted and worried that a claimed support from Éric Zemmour would take the direction of the JDD. The former editor of Current Valuesrecently fired, was confirmed to the editorial board on Tuesday, in front of the journalists of the house, by Arnaud Lagardère himself.

Collaborator of a deputy before becoming a journalist

Geoffroy Lejeune is 34 years old. He was born in 1988 in Avignon, the eldest son of five siblings – he also hired his little brother Bastien as the web editor of Current values. His father’s military career caused the family to move many times. He says it made him “adaptable”. This family in any case does not know the press, and does not talk about politics, a subject he discovers with his history lessons in prep class. Politics, he enters through the National Assembly, as a collaborator of a UMP deputy (Jean-Marc Roubaud). He says to himself that the journalist counts more than the legislator. After his law degree, he therefore entered the Paris School of Journalism, before doing internships at the Point and freelancers Current values where he settled as a journalist in 2013. He was then 25 years old.

>> Why the editorial staff of the “Journal du dimanche” opposes the appointment of Geoffroy Lejeune as head of the weekly

At that time, he was not yet managing editor of Current values. He writes papers. He leaves the memory of a huge hard worker, also a party animal, to the point of finding him asleep on the floor in the morning when he arrives at the editorial office. The contact is good, however, say the politicians he questions, including on the left. “We knew exactly his position but he did not proselytize, told franceinfo Edouardo Ryhan cypel, then spokesperson for the PS who assumes to have found him sympathetic and pro at the time. The deputy is however a little surprised to find himself quoted in the novel of political anticipation which will reveal Geoffroy Lejeune to the general public. We are then in 2015. The novel imagines above all Éric Zemmour accessing the Élysée, thanks to a right installed between the LR and the FN, with Claude Guéant as Prime Minister. This very right-wing label will never leave him.

Troublemaker on TV sets, excluded from LCI

This ideology, when he talks about it in 2017 in the magazine Charleshe swears she ain’t heading to Current valuesthat he wants to make a more journalistic newsmag, with less opinion. “We continue to fight, but overall the newspaper shouts less.” he says. The DG, Yves de Kerdrel, who appointed him, is more responsible for a newspaper at the heart of all the most combative right-wing groups.

Gradually, Geoffroy Lejeune assumed more and more of a troublemaker on TV sets, with this very right positioning. On Cnews, a Bolloré group channel, then Touche pas à Mon post chez Cyril Hanouna, with uninhibited remarks on immigration, identity or the monarchy. It is at LCI that this will cause the most teeth to cringe until this one of Current values in August 2020, showing LFI deputy Danièle Obono as a slave. An investigation is opened for racist insults, Geoffroy Lejeune is excluded from the channel. He will be convicted at first instance, but released on appeal.

The last presidential election in 2022 is another turning point in his career, with clear support for Éric Zemmour. Certain subjects are sometimes readjusted to give priority to this radical line. Some cite, for example, an exclusive piece of information picked up with a big shot in cancer research by the owner of the newspaper, the Franco-Lebanese billionaire shipowner Iskandar Safa. Geoffreoy Lejeune and his band, in particular his assistant Tugdual Denis or the journalist Charlotte D’Ornellas “took themselves to be the owners” entrusts to franceinfo an influential pen of the newspaper.

In the fall, Geoffroy Lejeune saves his head in extremis when Iskandar Safa reproaches him for this too Zemourian line of the presidential election, with an unprecedented communication operation, facing the camera, to mobilize the editorial staff and readers. “Dear readers, at Valeurs Actunaires, we have become accustomed in recent years to advancing under the shrapnelassures Geoffroy Lejeune. When we are not insulted, attacked, caricatured by the press, the left, certain politicians. We are being fought on television sets, in the newspapers or sometimes even on the streets, even in our own offices one day in August 2020 by the violent defense activists of the Black African Defense League. This umpteenth attempt at destabilization has led many of you to write to us to express your concern, your disgust or your incomprehension. Rest assured, once again they lost. At Valeurs Actuelles we do not have a resigning spirit and we will never give in to their injunctions. We do not abdicate the honor of being a target says Cyrano, the man of French panache.

Cyrano in reinforcement will not avoid a final clash in full editorial conference at the beginning of June with the new director of publication which is worth to the editorial director to be finally excluded. But recovered, almost instantly, by the JDD, Arnaud Lagardère and Vincent Bolloré. Geoffroy Lejeune, the zemourist also a childhood friend of Marion Maréchal Le Pen, they have known each other since they were 15 and live in the same building.